Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 2 · Licensed source edition
How Do Children Evaluate Scientific Explanations Provided by Digital Voice Assistants, Teachers, and Peers?
Originally published 2026-04-27 · Behavioral Sciences
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) · DOI 10.3390/bs16050661 ↗
AI / system type
Voice assistant / experimentally supplied explanations
Child-facing evidenceExamines children or child-focused systems. Transfer to everyday family life must be assessed separately.
The AI connection
Tests children’s judgments of explanations attributed to digital voice assistants versus teachers or peers; it is not a benchmark of generative model performance.
Why this reading matters
Offers a relatively large direct child experiment on source credibility and explanation quality, complementing parent-only attitudes studies.
Editorial reading guide · Trust
When a digital assistant and a person disagree, what guides a young child’s trust?
The experiments examine how children weigh digital and human sources of scientific explanations, an important basis for family conversations about AI authority.
Study context
310 children across two remote experiments
Age / stage: Children aged 4–6 years
Read with three questions
- How did assistant, teacher and peer sources differ across the two experiments?
- How was explanation quality manipulated?
- What does the task show about source preference rather than actual AI accuracy?
Keep the limits in view
The task used experimentally supplied explanations, not a live LLM conversation. Remote recruitment required technology access, and results concern young children in a specific task rather than all ages or everyday learning.
The text below is the original article’s licensed repository edition. Its wording is not rewritten. Use the Paper Agent beside the text to locate evidence; open the source for figures, tables and complete context.
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Follow the original.
Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Amanda S. Haber; Sona C. Kumar; Melia Swenson; Kara Bode; Elizabeth Ruel (2026). How Do Children Evaluate Scientific Explanations Provided by Digital Voice Assistants, Teachers, and Peers? Behavioral Sciences. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs16050661
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.